A quick status update: Dredmor should be getting a second patch – 1.0.10 – this Thursday, or – worst-case scenario next Tuesday. (I’m not releasing patches on Fridays any more. Once bitten, twice shy.) This will be going to Steam, Desura, and the HIB simultaneously, so everybody will finally be up to date. This fixes the bookshelf crash, the weird loading of saves related crashes on OS X and Linux machines, and adds a few cosmetic niceties (working magic reflection, remembering what mods are loaded, remembering if you have disabled click-to-move, random boss monsters occasionally having additional magic resistance, that kind of thing) that have been on people’s lists for awhile.

We have been uncommunicative lately, and this is our fault. Owing to external factors which we cannot announce yet, we have suddenly found ourselves catapulted into Project Odin, almost full-time, somewhat quicker than we anticipated. We’re not entirely sure how much we can talk about this yet, which is problematic, and everybody is probably wondering what’s going on. Ah, growing pains. (This has also been one of the reasons why we are looking for additional gameplay programmers; at least one person will be working on Dredmor with me, on a full-time basis, for the next few months.)

While we can’t give away what Odin is *just* yet – although there have been some pretty good guesses made – we can start talking a little bit about things we have been working on. We have acquired a real budget, oddly; dealing with this, and getting this organized, has been our major time-occupying phenomenon. Other major activities last week have included:

running art tests and programmer interviews,

gear simulation code,

procedural extrusion code,

designing a series of menacing secret policemen with plague-doctor masks,

learning about Leyden jars,

my ongoing battle with the networking and gameplay code,

procedural water simulation on the GPU,

and reading every paper every written by the Spore development team at EA Maxis…

45 Responses to “Dredmor; Odin”

Ah, I’m guessing this mysterious source of funding is the reason you’ve been catapulted into Project Odin and is also the reason why you can’t say too much yet. Oh well, I hope you guys don’t lose too much independence!

Don’t worry, we won’t be losing any independence. It’s really important to us that we remain an indie game studio: the closer we the developers are to you the gamers, the better the games we make will be =)

Thank you for supporting DoD so much! I’ve lost faith in the major publishers lately, glad to have such great indie devs step up and support their products and not just expecting the fans to patch their game for them.

We might give you guys some hot/cold ideas in the future, but for now, we’re keeping our lips sealed. That said, in order to give you guys some interesting stuff to read, we will be releasing little bits and pieces of what we’re working on via the blog as time goes on. Expect ominous concept art!

Considering that back in the day, communication was basically only through written word or press release, I think you’re doing just fine. Gaming and the patch cycle for games have sped up drastically with the increase in indies and the internet. It’s something we tend to take for granted now. So it might feel like you’ve been gone for awhile, but it says something that two or three weeks without an update feels like an “absence” in the gaming industry these days. It’s really not! Please take your time.

You call this being uncommunicative?! There are indie game developers out there who go missing for months at a time (years in extreme cases). Even in the case of the big companies, you can spend forever waiting for responses to urgent support issues, never mind just checking in with fans and keeping everyone updated.

You guys are doing fine. More than fine, really. You’re setting a great example for how indie devs should interact with their fan community.

Is there any hope for some further optimizations of the OS X port of Dungeons of Dredmoor?

Upon trying to play aforementioned (and brilliant, thanks!) game in OS X, I run worse lag than when playing Skyrim on the same machine. Even the mouse pointer lags, on the main screen (which is just a static image).

Since my MacBook Pro is far above and beyond the minimum requirements for DoD, and since DoD runs perfect under Windows on the same machine (sadly, I have just removed my Windows partition, thus my query), my only conclusion is that the OS X port is somewhat less than optimized and polished 😉

Are there any known fixes to this, or might there be hope for some further OS X optimizations of DoD?

(Ah, I forgot to mention, an additional issue: fullscreen mode is broken under OS X on my MacBook Pro. Launching in fullscreen mode gives me a white screen, with the music playing, and presumable the game active somewhere under all the white, since I think I can press menus and such.)

I’m hoping that when we upgrade to the newest version of SDL, it will help with the optimization issues. (I know it’ll fix the fullscreen stuff.) The question is: what else will that upgrade break? … hence, why it’s not going in the up coming patch until we have a chance to do more thorough QA.

I’m very disappointed. It’s my first time replying but I had to, just to say how I’m disappointed…

Tagged dredmor, project odin

Y NO FUNNY TAG ?

On a more serious note, is Peter Diggleson’s King Krong DLC coming soon ?

Now, seriously, seriously, if you call your communication being uncommunicative, despite doing a lot of entries on your blog and going so far as answering to the replies there and on your forums, what word is strong enough for real uncommunicative game companies (which are, well, most of them) ?
Keep up the good work, keep patching and improving DoD, work hard on your project Odin (which has to be about platinum cars, time paradoxes and lunatic space pirates) and stop worrying about non-issues since you’re doing great.

ps : you forgot one bug, the I-need-asphyxiative-damage-for-the-double-rainbow-steam-acheivement-and-I’m-so-out-of-luck-I-can’t-get-my-hands-on-it-no-matter-what-please-do-something-to-fix-this-thank-you bug.

Project Odin is the secret plot to replace the American presidential elections in 2012 with an Arch Diggle. And given the quantity of sheer unadulterated fear and hatred that is going to be generated by the two main parties in this election, I for one am looking forward to this change.

You’re reading about Spore to make sure you know what NOT to do, correct? Really, it was the most disappointing game ever, and taught me never to look forward to an unreleased game. And most importantly, never pre-order.

My brother and I found Spore to be very imaginative and adventurous (my Omnoms, a beastly, dragon-like race ruled by diplomacy and with sophistication, which included mustaches and top hats). Sure, it could have been boat loads better, no other such game would let me do what I did with my Omnoms. We’ve been waiting for a second one (which I doubt will come). If Gaslamp ever made something similar, I’d buy it and everything you release for it and I’d bug my friends and family about buying it until they either got it or hated me for it… or, well, until it became apparent they simply won’t get it.
Just optimize the game to run smooth, unlike Spore.

Honestly, Everyone wanted the Spore game hat they showed at the e3 demo, and what we got was compeltely different. Cut down content reduced to minigames, limeted ontent to allow for overpriced ‘expansion’ parts. And the whole thing was nearly unplayably buggy for people.

That would probably of been excusable, with how fun it could be and some of the amazing things the creator did. But the DRM issue turned it into a nightmare.

Keep up the great work. You Gaslamp is my favorite indie company and for good reason. Great customer response and amazing game that you guys keep updating. Can’t wait for your future projects to be released!

Hi guys, first time here
I just wanted to leave my feedback on the feedback box. it’s most likely possible that I don.t comeback to see replies.

*rant*
I.m burned down on games, seriously burned down.
guess what, i don.t want to be the dragonborn, i want to be a farmer that gets pissed of with so many dragons messing up his crops that one day he flips and does some push ups before grabbing his “first in-game sword”, then the looting and fun begins.
please, developers in general, don.t make me feel special, i’ll take care of that part.
*rant ends*

talking about the surprisingly fresh Dungeons of Dredmor:

– freshness: finnally a game that I don.t allow myself to play without permadeath. It’s sooo refreshing for me that you guys have no idea how much. Played 1 time without permadeath and i said to myself, no more… It just make me attack everything that moves because I know that essentially I can come back to the saved’n’safe state. Permadeath ON is a state of bliss that I cannot describe, It just makes me immerse in the gameplay soooo much.

(this is from someone whose maximum dungeon lvl reached was lvl5 on dwarvish moderation… and everytime I die, It brings me a smile, and then some cursing also, but with such a smile in my face… thanks guys)

– Loot: love it.

– Sense of Humor: love it

– style of graphics: for me it was like coca cola, first I stranged it and then it grew inside me

– Stats: Incredible system. everything is layed out, its there, you can see the numbers, simple numbers, beautifull and round numbers.

Thanks for having made this game. really, It’s a jewel.

– Ideas from the humble player side:

. to pick up the, call it “engine”, call it core, from this game, put it under a layer of 2D drawned graphics of which the art style/atmosphere could resemble diablo 1

. the character shows everything that he has equiped and he also shows everything that he is carrying.
this is something i never saw in a game and I go crazy because I don.t get why.
I explain myself, you are carrying a shield that you are not using but it’s in your inventory, that shield should go to your back. You are carrying a stave/sword/axe/bow that you are not equiping, goes to your back. daggers? 2 of them, in your belt.
you carry ingredients for potions, use that satchel in your belt, want more space for ingredients and maybe some rocks? use a backpack in your back, loosing the ability to carry a shield/weapins there.
it.s a compromise.

As I am writing I am thinking: oh wait, that goes against the loot grabbing feeling that you come to expect and “love”.

hum… consider it as rewarding and as fresh as permadeath is. Its a trade off. you carry a good sword on your back and u can get good gold for it, you find a good axe, choose. you cannot take the 2 of them plus the one you are already wielding. choose wisely. plan. feel great afterwards for leaving such a good sword on the ground, you have a new axe on your back now.

goes against the loot hoarder that we turned into, its refreshing. everytime the game makes me choose, chooose carefully, i feel my brain itching. I love it.

– turn based game: no questions about it. everything already moves so fast outside. i am playing a game right now, at my own pace. with the rythm of my heartbeat. i might eve grow a beard now that I thinck about it. turn based forever.

I am not a developer, i never learned how to code. But, I wan.t to play this game.
Pick my idea up, pass it on to a friend, start a company out of this if you have to. believe.